(scientificamerican.com): The trend of increasing open-access publication has many singing its praises, but not everyone sees unbridled scientific advancement. In the past dozen years or so scientists have increasingly turned toward "open access" (OA) publication, where full-text articles, research results or complete journal issues are freely available online, rather than accessible only to subscribers who pay for a subscription, as a way to make these metaphorical giants' shoulders more widely accessible.

(pcworld.com): Negotiators working on a controversial international copyright-enforcement agreement have finalized the language in the proposed pact, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said Monday. The final language of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is available at the USTR's website. The proposed agreement, encompassing the U.S., U.K., Japan, the European Union and several other nations, would require signing nations to include border searches in their copyright enforcement measures.

(p2pnet.net): A coalition of English-language writers organizations have publicly posted their response to Bill C-32. Despite an ideal opportunity for constructive dialogue and a good faith effort to find compromise positions on the more contentious elements of the bill, the groups have chosen to increase the level of fear mongering with a misleading and often inaccurate document that implausibly claims the end of Canadian publishing is near if C-32 is passed in its current form.

(zdnet.com): If you're a regular Google user, you've probably noticed the little magnifying glass that now appears next to search results. Google claims they intended this new feature to reduce unnecessary page loads. How would this feature impact Web site traffic and how legal was it?

(jiscinvolve.org): Recently there seems to be a surge in activity around open bibliographic metadata. Libraries throughout Europe have been experimenting. The British Library and the CERN library are two notable examples of libraries that have decided to release their bibliographic metadata under an open licence. You can get an idea for the amount of experimentation and interest in this area by following the lively discussions on the Open Knowledge Foundation's (OKFN) open bibliography mailing list.